I don't know why I didn't think to take a picture of Roland at work, but alas I did not. He was such a good pup today. He pretty much just sat next to me - I took a blanket in for him, put out a bowl of water, gave him a chew and his new stuffed duck and he was super happy. Everyone in the office thought he was great. They kept comment on what a good (and nice) dog he was. He is the best dog ever born! And this is a professional, unbiased opinion.
That's all I wanted to report today. I am so tired right now. I think I'll try and head off to bed soon.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Saturday, January 27, 2007
It's 2 a.m. Do you know where your murderers are?
Oh. My. God. I swear I'm beginning to loath Fridays. Listen people, Friday is no time to be murdering families in their sleep. It also no time to be arresting their murderers. Some of us just want to get home at a decent hour and not have to work a 18-hour day on Saturday and Sunday.
Tomorrow I'll will attempt a new experiment. I am taking Roland to the newsroom because I'm afraid his bladder can't take too many more of these 13-hour days.
Also, on a completely different note, if you haven't heard Bruce Springsteen's The Seeger Sessions, check it out now. I have never owned a Springsteen album in my life but I LOVE this one. They play it on the radio here all the time because the Seeger - Pete, in this case - lives in my city. So we sort of claim ownership of the album even though I don't think Springsteen has even ever set foot up this far north. But, whatever. It's good. Trust me.
Tomorrow I'll will attempt a new experiment. I am taking Roland to the newsroom because I'm afraid his bladder can't take too many more of these 13-hour days.
Also, on a completely different note, if you haven't heard Bruce Springsteen's The Seeger Sessions, check it out now. I have never owned a Springsteen album in my life but I LOVE this one. They play it on the radio here all the time because the Seeger - Pete, in this case - lives in my city. So we sort of claim ownership of the album even though I don't think Springsteen has even ever set foot up this far north. But, whatever. It's good. Trust me.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Food Snob
Even in retirement, food writers are so holier-than-thou. But you know right away you can't trust this guy because he found the Omonia Cafe's galactobouriko good. And as those of you who I dragged there know (and those of you who read a previous entry on the subject know) that place is over priced and the pastries, and coffee, for that matter, are bad. Anyway, I also take offense at " Greek cuisine does not, even at its best, ascend to great heights." I have posted (with absolutely no permission from the NYT) the full article below.
January 26, 2007
My City
Queens Now Has Less Feta, More Jellyfish
By WILLIAM GRIMES
LIKE most New York immigrant stories, mine started with a long trip, a small apartment in a humble neighborhood and hope for a better life. Sure enough, I graduated from the little apartment to a bigger one, and then a house. I got a better job and a better life. But 27 years later, the neighborhood remains the same: Astoria, Queens.
Try as I might, I cannot think of a good reason to leave. From the Manhattan perspective, Astoria makes some sense because it is, after all, only a few short subway stops from Bloomingdale’s. If you cannot afford Manhattan, well, Astoria — like Park Slope, Sunnyside, Cobble Hill and all the rest of the runner-up darlings of the real-estate pages — qualifies as a fallback position.
But that’s not how I see it. For me, Astoria is not a satellite of Manhattan, it’s the gateway to Queens, a jumping-off point for the borough that, when it comes to ethnic diversity, knows no equal. For me this is not an abstract demographic issue. It is as real as the food on my plate.
As Astoria has changed, and along with it the rest of Queens, my feeding habits have too, never more so than in the last couple of years. Three years ago I stepped down as The Times’s restaurant critic and re-entered civilian life. Gone were the days of lavish Manhattan meals paid for by my employer. I rediscovered my own kitchen and, at the same time, my own neighborhood. The parasitic life of being fed by others was over. My wife, Nancy, and I were hunter-gatherers again. But the terrain had changed.
In 1980, when my rent was $250 a month, Astoria was heavily Greek and Italian. Broadway, my nearest shopping street, abounded in Italian delicatessens and Greek butchers who hung hairy goat carcasses and fuzzy rabbits in the window. Their number has dwindled with the years. A Swiss butcher named René operated a truly anomalous store, a French-style boucherie. His ancient, white-haired mother sat at the cash register and took the money. René, who looked like an enormous slab of meat, took my orders for, say, noisette of pork, without raising an eyebrow. Alas, René is long gone, as is Walken’s Bakery a few doors away, owned by the family of the actor Christopher Walken.
Other ethnic surprises survive. Although the original owner has retired, Astoria Meat Products continues to sell Eastern European sausages, breads and jams. Big chunks of double-smoked bacon and plump, garlicky kielbasa hang from steel rods overhead. On weekends, when the mood strikes, I still drop by and pick up half a smoked, glazed ham.
The Italians are almost all gone, and many of the Greeks have moved on too. The demise of my favorite Greek deli had one fortunate consequence, though. It led me to Titan Foods, a supermarket that draws Greek shoppers from miles around. This is the place for olives — nearly 20 varieties displayed in big steel cylinders — and for feta cheese in every gradation, from crumbly, salty Greek styles to smoother, milder fetas from Bulgaria. It is almost shocking to report that the French make feta too, the creamiest of all.
The real prize in the deli case at Titan is home-made yogurt, thick, tangy and rich, a different species entirely from the standard grocery store brands. Titan sells the standard Greek pastries from a bakery counter, but I go either to Omonia Cafe, on Broadway, where the phyllo-topped custard is so good that I finally asked the woman behind the counter to pronounce it for me so I could order it by name. It’s: galaktoboreko (guh-lock-tuh-BORE-ee-ko). The baklava is also first-rate — packed with finely chopped nuts, well-seasoned and not too goopy — but there’s an even better version at a hole-in-the-wall on 31st Avenue: Thessalikon Pastry Shop, a caterer that sells its wares, often grudgingly, by the tray.
Let us not romanticize the Greek restaurants of Astoria. For some reason, many a food writer, charmed by the neighborhood, has gone weak in the knees over steam-table moussaka, rubbery fried calamari and greasy lamb shanks. Greek cuisine does not, even at its best, ascend to great heights. For a time, Elias Corner on 31st Street enjoyed a cult reputation that utterly mystified me. It is an estiatorio, a type of restaurant in which customers approach a fish counter, point to their choice and pay by the pound. The fish is painted with some olive oil, strewn with a few herbs and grilled. That’s it.
For some reason, this formula besotted New York for several years, even though rank amateurs could produce the same results at home. I much prefer the five-year-old Agnanti, at the upper end of the neighborhood near Astoria Park, which offers unusual regional dishes like ntaka, a Cretan bread salad, and mustard-dipped shrimp kataifi.
Astoria without Greeks is unthinkable. It is the home not only of Socrates Sculpture Park but also of Socrates Realty and Athena’s nail salon. But in my end of the neighborhood, near the 36th Avenue el stop, the ethnic swirl has brought Bangladeshis, Colombians, Brazilians and Mexicans.
On summer nights, unpredictably, a Bangladeshi vegetable vendor occasionally turns up, his cart heaped high with Asian vegetables sold by no one else. Asian sari shops, sweet shops and grocery stores now line 36th Avenue, along with a video store that brightens the street with its showings of Bollywood musicals on a flat-screen television. On Broadway, one stop north on the N Line, Mexican taquerias flank the off-track betting parlor.
At the far end of the neighborhood, immigrants from Egypt and North Africa have remade a desolate stretch of Steinway Street into a lively boulevard lined with restaurants, hookah cafes and bakeries.
So much for home base. Queens is vast. Over the decades, my explorer’s compass has pointed in wildly different directions. For a while, a Gujarati restaurant in Elmhurst had my full attention, until it burned down. Ping’s and Joe’s Shanghai in Elmhurst also enjoyed my favor. In Woodside, La Flor Bakery and Cafe sells sublime $4 fruit tarts that require two diners to finish them off. My thoughts often turn to them in idle hours.
But Flushing is now my north star. Over the years, an area once in sorry decline has evolved into a pulsating Chinese and Korean neighborhood and a food-lover’s paradise. This is not new news, but it took me a while to catch up. My culinary life has been transformed by the Gold City Supermarket on Kissena Boulevard, a huge, high-energy store, half of it devoted to a dazzling selection of imported sauces, condiments and dried and frozen foods, the other half to produce and meat departments that boggle the mind.
It pays to do some homework before visiting. Although prices are posted, all signs are in Chinese characters. Bruce Cost’s classic “Asian Ingredients” (Morrow Cookbooks) or Huang Su-Huei’s well-illustrated “Chinese Cuisine” (Wei-Chuan) can serve as guides to the aisles stacked with exotic barbecue sauces, light and dark Chinese soy sauces and small treasures like pickled mustard cabbage.
The fish counter is dramatic. I once saw an eel make a break for freedom, slithering across the produce-department floor. Customers like to pick out a live fish, which an impassive fishmonger holds aloft, flopping in a net. A quick whack from a wooden mallet, and the performance is over.
The post-shopping reward is just a few doors away, at the Fay Da Bakery. This is a chain with two outlets in Chinatown and six others scattered across the city. Patrons take a tray, grab a pair of tongs and load up on steamed and fried buns, both savory and sweet. Some are both at once, like a chewy, sticky-rice bun that looks like a honey-dip doughnut outside but inside contains pork bits swimming in a rich gravy.
Then it’s on to downtown Flushing and the J&L Mall. Flushing abounds in monster Chinese restaurants that do a bonanza dim-sum business. But hidden in nooks and corners are tiny stands that offer outstanding bargains. My consigliere in these matters is Harley Spiller, a relentless Chinese-food detective who occasionally sends out field reports to his friends. The “mall” is nothing more than a corridor on Main Street lined by rows of snack stands and lunch counters. Little or no English is spoken, so non-Chinese customers adapt. Finger pointing and basic business terms like “two” or “three” work fine. The stall owners, in my experience, are friendly, accommodating and intrigued to see a non-Chinese customer.
Halfway down the aisle, on the left, a bun stall turns out a variety of large steamed and baked buns at a dollar or two apiece. The best is a crepelike envelope of soft dough encasing chopped chives, egg and glass noodles. A close cousin, which came hot from the oven on my most recent visit, was a big ball of pillowy steamed bread dough filled with egg, glass noodle, chopped Chinese leeks and tiny dried shrimp.
At the entrance of the mall, to the right, the buns come three for a dollar. The staple items are small steamed buns with beef or pork filling, but you can also find sweet fried doughnuts accented with scallion, or sticky rice snacks with a meat and mushroom center. These are steamed in a bamboo leaf and then tied up in a neat package.
At the back of the mall, spicy Szechuan vegetable dishes are sold from a counter by weight. There are about a dozen choices. I picked four at random on my last visit: long strands of pickled seaweed; cabbage and peppercorns in a fragrant, winey pickling broth; cubes of amber, firm tofu with peanuts and sesame seed; and pickled long beans, chopped into tiny slices and tossed with red-pepper flakes.
Flushing may occupy me for a while. There’s another mall just a couple of blocks down Main Street, the Golden Shopping Mall, that merits investigation. And even more seductive is the strangely named Waterfront International Enterprises, a restaurant specializing in the cuisine of northeastern China. It’s cold-weather food, heavily reliant on hearty soups and stews. Grilled whole jellyfish, evidently, is the traditional way to start the meal. Count me in.
January 26, 2007
My City
Queens Now Has Less Feta, More Jellyfish
By WILLIAM GRIMES
LIKE most New York immigrant stories, mine started with a long trip, a small apartment in a humble neighborhood and hope for a better life. Sure enough, I graduated from the little apartment to a bigger one, and then a house. I got a better job and a better life. But 27 years later, the neighborhood remains the same: Astoria, Queens.
Try as I might, I cannot think of a good reason to leave. From the Manhattan perspective, Astoria makes some sense because it is, after all, only a few short subway stops from Bloomingdale’s. If you cannot afford Manhattan, well, Astoria — like Park Slope, Sunnyside, Cobble Hill and all the rest of the runner-up darlings of the real-estate pages — qualifies as a fallback position.
But that’s not how I see it. For me, Astoria is not a satellite of Manhattan, it’s the gateway to Queens, a jumping-off point for the borough that, when it comes to ethnic diversity, knows no equal. For me this is not an abstract demographic issue. It is as real as the food on my plate.
As Astoria has changed, and along with it the rest of Queens, my feeding habits have too, never more so than in the last couple of years. Three years ago I stepped down as The Times’s restaurant critic and re-entered civilian life. Gone were the days of lavish Manhattan meals paid for by my employer. I rediscovered my own kitchen and, at the same time, my own neighborhood. The parasitic life of being fed by others was over. My wife, Nancy, and I were hunter-gatherers again. But the terrain had changed.
In 1980, when my rent was $250 a month, Astoria was heavily Greek and Italian. Broadway, my nearest shopping street, abounded in Italian delicatessens and Greek butchers who hung hairy goat carcasses and fuzzy rabbits in the window. Their number has dwindled with the years. A Swiss butcher named René operated a truly anomalous store, a French-style boucherie. His ancient, white-haired mother sat at the cash register and took the money. René, who looked like an enormous slab of meat, took my orders for, say, noisette of pork, without raising an eyebrow. Alas, René is long gone, as is Walken’s Bakery a few doors away, owned by the family of the actor Christopher Walken.
Other ethnic surprises survive. Although the original owner has retired, Astoria Meat Products continues to sell Eastern European sausages, breads and jams. Big chunks of double-smoked bacon and plump, garlicky kielbasa hang from steel rods overhead. On weekends, when the mood strikes, I still drop by and pick up half a smoked, glazed ham.
The Italians are almost all gone, and many of the Greeks have moved on too. The demise of my favorite Greek deli had one fortunate consequence, though. It led me to Titan Foods, a supermarket that draws Greek shoppers from miles around. This is the place for olives — nearly 20 varieties displayed in big steel cylinders — and for feta cheese in every gradation, from crumbly, salty Greek styles to smoother, milder fetas from Bulgaria. It is almost shocking to report that the French make feta too, the creamiest of all.
The real prize in the deli case at Titan is home-made yogurt, thick, tangy and rich, a different species entirely from the standard grocery store brands. Titan sells the standard Greek pastries from a bakery counter, but I go either to Omonia Cafe, on Broadway, where the phyllo-topped custard is so good that I finally asked the woman behind the counter to pronounce it for me so I could order it by name. It’s: galaktoboreko (guh-lock-tuh-BORE-ee-ko). The baklava is also first-rate — packed with finely chopped nuts, well-seasoned and not too goopy — but there’s an even better version at a hole-in-the-wall on 31st Avenue: Thessalikon Pastry Shop, a caterer that sells its wares, often grudgingly, by the tray.
Let us not romanticize the Greek restaurants of Astoria. For some reason, many a food writer, charmed by the neighborhood, has gone weak in the knees over steam-table moussaka, rubbery fried calamari and greasy lamb shanks. Greek cuisine does not, even at its best, ascend to great heights. For a time, Elias Corner on 31st Street enjoyed a cult reputation that utterly mystified me. It is an estiatorio, a type of restaurant in which customers approach a fish counter, point to their choice and pay by the pound. The fish is painted with some olive oil, strewn with a few herbs and grilled. That’s it.
For some reason, this formula besotted New York for several years, even though rank amateurs could produce the same results at home. I much prefer the five-year-old Agnanti, at the upper end of the neighborhood near Astoria Park, which offers unusual regional dishes like ntaka, a Cretan bread salad, and mustard-dipped shrimp kataifi.
Astoria without Greeks is unthinkable. It is the home not only of Socrates Sculpture Park but also of Socrates Realty and Athena’s nail salon. But in my end of the neighborhood, near the 36th Avenue el stop, the ethnic swirl has brought Bangladeshis, Colombians, Brazilians and Mexicans.
On summer nights, unpredictably, a Bangladeshi vegetable vendor occasionally turns up, his cart heaped high with Asian vegetables sold by no one else. Asian sari shops, sweet shops and grocery stores now line 36th Avenue, along with a video store that brightens the street with its showings of Bollywood musicals on a flat-screen television. On Broadway, one stop north on the N Line, Mexican taquerias flank the off-track betting parlor.
At the far end of the neighborhood, immigrants from Egypt and North Africa have remade a desolate stretch of Steinway Street into a lively boulevard lined with restaurants, hookah cafes and bakeries.
So much for home base. Queens is vast. Over the decades, my explorer’s compass has pointed in wildly different directions. For a while, a Gujarati restaurant in Elmhurst had my full attention, until it burned down. Ping’s and Joe’s Shanghai in Elmhurst also enjoyed my favor. In Woodside, La Flor Bakery and Cafe sells sublime $4 fruit tarts that require two diners to finish them off. My thoughts often turn to them in idle hours.
But Flushing is now my north star. Over the years, an area once in sorry decline has evolved into a pulsating Chinese and Korean neighborhood and a food-lover’s paradise. This is not new news, but it took me a while to catch up. My culinary life has been transformed by the Gold City Supermarket on Kissena Boulevard, a huge, high-energy store, half of it devoted to a dazzling selection of imported sauces, condiments and dried and frozen foods, the other half to produce and meat departments that boggle the mind.
It pays to do some homework before visiting. Although prices are posted, all signs are in Chinese characters. Bruce Cost’s classic “Asian Ingredients” (Morrow Cookbooks) or Huang Su-Huei’s well-illustrated “Chinese Cuisine” (Wei-Chuan) can serve as guides to the aisles stacked with exotic barbecue sauces, light and dark Chinese soy sauces and small treasures like pickled mustard cabbage.
The fish counter is dramatic. I once saw an eel make a break for freedom, slithering across the produce-department floor. Customers like to pick out a live fish, which an impassive fishmonger holds aloft, flopping in a net. A quick whack from a wooden mallet, and the performance is over.
The post-shopping reward is just a few doors away, at the Fay Da Bakery. This is a chain with two outlets in Chinatown and six others scattered across the city. Patrons take a tray, grab a pair of tongs and load up on steamed and fried buns, both savory and sweet. Some are both at once, like a chewy, sticky-rice bun that looks like a honey-dip doughnut outside but inside contains pork bits swimming in a rich gravy.
Then it’s on to downtown Flushing and the J&L Mall. Flushing abounds in monster Chinese restaurants that do a bonanza dim-sum business. But hidden in nooks and corners are tiny stands that offer outstanding bargains. My consigliere in these matters is Harley Spiller, a relentless Chinese-food detective who occasionally sends out field reports to his friends. The “mall” is nothing more than a corridor on Main Street lined by rows of snack stands and lunch counters. Little or no English is spoken, so non-Chinese customers adapt. Finger pointing and basic business terms like “two” or “three” work fine. The stall owners, in my experience, are friendly, accommodating and intrigued to see a non-Chinese customer.
Halfway down the aisle, on the left, a bun stall turns out a variety of large steamed and baked buns at a dollar or two apiece. The best is a crepelike envelope of soft dough encasing chopped chives, egg and glass noodles. A close cousin, which came hot from the oven on my most recent visit, was a big ball of pillowy steamed bread dough filled with egg, glass noodle, chopped Chinese leeks and tiny dried shrimp.
At the entrance of the mall, to the right, the buns come three for a dollar. The staple items are small steamed buns with beef or pork filling, but you can also find sweet fried doughnuts accented with scallion, or sticky rice snacks with a meat and mushroom center. These are steamed in a bamboo leaf and then tied up in a neat package.
At the back of the mall, spicy Szechuan vegetable dishes are sold from a counter by weight. There are about a dozen choices. I picked four at random on my last visit: long strands of pickled seaweed; cabbage and peppercorns in a fragrant, winey pickling broth; cubes of amber, firm tofu with peanuts and sesame seed; and pickled long beans, chopped into tiny slices and tossed with red-pepper flakes.
Flushing may occupy me for a while. There’s another mall just a couple of blocks down Main Street, the Golden Shopping Mall, that merits investigation. And even more seductive is the strangely named Waterfront International Enterprises, a restaurant specializing in the cuisine of northeastern China. It’s cold-weather food, heavily reliant on hearty soups and stews. Grilled whole jellyfish, evidently, is the traditional way to start the meal. Count me in.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Español
Things have been a little crazy here lately. In the last week, I've started back with Spanish classes (I'm at 200-level now) and a family of five was murdered in the town I technically live in (though my mailing address says I live elsewhere) and then their house was set on fire to cover the murder. That has meant very, very long days and late nights for me and very few days off. I have been chained to this computer Webbing....always Webbing...updates to the story, and of course directing reporters and photographers.
I was so tired Tuesday night that I came home from work, took the dog out to pee and apparently forgot, not only to lock the door, but to shut it all the way. So Wednesday morning my cat escaped into the hallway, got in a fight with a dog and then ran into my upstairs neighbor's apartment when he opened the door to go to work and hid under his bed. I was awakened by said neighbor, who just moved in last week, gently knocking on my door. Though I was still very much asleep, I managed to stumble upstairs in my pjs, wedge myself under the bed and reclaim the cat – not wihtout serious woundage. Always a nice introduction to the new neighbors.
Anyway, all you could ever want to know about the murdered family can be found at: www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/MOREY
I won't even bother going into it because I'm tired of talking about it and seriously there's more there than I would ever have the energy to recreate here. If you have any additional questions you can ask them here, though. Or you can join in the spirited story chats, which blame the murders on everyone from the Republicans to illegal Jamaican immigrants to the Mob.
Tonight, however, I got out relatively early (considering they bulldozed the crime scene and Anderson Cooper 360 did a piece on the murders today) and so I have a little time to lock my doors and blog. I also had orientation today to be a Spanish tutor for the 100-level students. Before we started back to classes, I got a post card in the mail from the college asking me to sign up as a tutor based on my grade point average in 102. (I have a 4.0. Ah, if only Professor Chumley could see me know. So I barely made it through French classes. Now, NOW, I'm a linguist.) They pay. And I could use the extra money and the language practice.
So far 201 is very hard. The first chapter - the chapter we are on now - is all about the environment. And while the previous chapters on food and clothing and family all featured words I had some familiarity with through day-to-day life, chatting about the hole in ozone layer (el agujero en la capa de ozono) and nuclear waste (los desperdicios nucleares) are not conversations I imagine ever having much need for. [Yes, waiter, I'll have a margarita and how about the destruction of the rain forests (la selva tropical). That sucks, huh?] Hopefully, I'll be able to keep that 4.0 this semester.
I was so tired Tuesday night that I came home from work, took the dog out to pee and apparently forgot, not only to lock the door, but to shut it all the way. So Wednesday morning my cat escaped into the hallway, got in a fight with a dog and then ran into my upstairs neighbor's apartment when he opened the door to go to work and hid under his bed. I was awakened by said neighbor, who just moved in last week, gently knocking on my door. Though I was still very much asleep, I managed to stumble upstairs in my pjs, wedge myself under the bed and reclaim the cat – not wihtout serious woundage. Always a nice introduction to the new neighbors.
Anyway, all you could ever want to know about the murdered family can be found at: www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/MOREY
I won't even bother going into it because I'm tired of talking about it and seriously there's more there than I would ever have the energy to recreate here. If you have any additional questions you can ask them here, though. Or you can join in the spirited story chats, which blame the murders on everyone from the Republicans to illegal Jamaican immigrants to the Mob.
Tonight, however, I got out relatively early (considering they bulldozed the crime scene and Anderson Cooper 360 did a piece on the murders today) and so I have a little time to lock my doors and blog. I also had orientation today to be a Spanish tutor for the 100-level students. Before we started back to classes, I got a post card in the mail from the college asking me to sign up as a tutor based on my grade point average in 102. (I have a 4.0. Ah, if only Professor Chumley could see me know. So I barely made it through French classes. Now, NOW, I'm a linguist.) They pay. And I could use the extra money and the language practice.
So far 201 is very hard. The first chapter - the chapter we are on now - is all about the environment. And while the previous chapters on food and clothing and family all featured words I had some familiarity with through day-to-day life, chatting about the hole in ozone layer (el agujero en la capa de ozono) and nuclear waste (los desperdicios nucleares) are not conversations I imagine ever having much need for. [Yes, waiter, I'll have a margarita and how about the destruction of the rain forests (la selva tropical). That sucks, huh?] Hopefully, I'll be able to keep that 4.0 this semester.
Friday, January 19, 2007
Snow Pup
These are from this morning. Roland LOVES snow. He was running around, digging his nose in it, eating it - basically, acting like a crazy little puppy. Most of it has melted now that the sun has come out and the yard is just a muddy mess. But we hold out hope that more snow will come before the end of the season.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
First snow
Yeah! At last!
I mean, yeah, it's the most pathetic snow you've ever seen. By the time I left work tonight, I didn't even have to scrap anything off my windshield and all the roads were clear. But earlier in the day there were like 60 accidents due to the ice and snow. I guess everyone was just really excited about the snow and trying to cram the whole winter into one day because who knows if we'll get any more (snow).
There's still a light dusting of white stuff on the grass. If there's any in the morning I'll post a photo. All I have is the digital camera on my phone and the one built into my computer, so I can't really take photos at night - not so you can tell what the hell the photo is supposed to be, at least.
I mean, yeah, it's the most pathetic snow you've ever seen. By the time I left work tonight, I didn't even have to scrap anything off my windshield and all the roads were clear. But earlier in the day there were like 60 accidents due to the ice and snow. I guess everyone was just really excited about the snow and trying to cram the whole winter into one day because who knows if we'll get any more (snow).
There's still a light dusting of white stuff on the grass. If there's any in the morning I'll post a photo. All I have is the digital camera on my phone and the one built into my computer, so I can't really take photos at night - not so you can tell what the hell the photo is supposed to be, at least.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Laughter = good. Booing = bad.
So Letterman was very cool. While the guests weren't the greatest due to all the stars being in LA for the Golden Globes, I did love seeing Amy Sedaris. There was some magician (I can't remember his name). He did some slight of hand card tricks. It was okay. Then, the weirdest part, America played with Ryan Adams and Ben someone-or-another. I'm sure the kids know him. But what WAS cool was that I was in the fourth row right behind the band - spitting distance, not that I would spit on them. I think that would have been frowned upon.I was there by myself, which was a little weird since everyone else was all coupled up, but my guest couldn't make it so they recycled his ticket to the standby audience. Aside from the standby audience, the show also sends people out to Times Square to hand out tickets. I guess they want a diversified audience.
There is A LOT of pepping the audience up by the interns before the show. That quickly grew tiresome. Actually I was more excited about being at the show BEFORE they started trying to get us excited about being at the show. Anyway, what happens is you show up at 2 p.m. to queue for the tickets you've already been given. You get to the front, you tell the guy your last name, you show your ID. They send you inside. You go to another person who asks, "Who's list are you on?" I told her I was on Jamie's. They send you to another person who asks your name and checks your ID again. Then they hand you your ticket. You go stand in a group and they tell you to come back at 3:30 p.m. and stand in line again...this time lining up in the order of the number on your ticket. I was 54 (I think. I can't remember, exactly now.)
I had an hour to kill so I went to Starbucks. A little before 3:30, I return, queue up again. In the first line I had made friends with the people behind me, Vivian from Alabama and Robert from England. And so that gave me something to do in the second queue as well since they were right behind me. Anyway, after waiting for a while, they cram you into the foyer of the theatre and talk to you about what you can and can't do (yes to clapping; no to booing. yes to laughing no to high pitched sounds like whistling and "woo-hoo"s because of the finely tuned microphones or something like that). They go on about how important it is to be animated and to laugh LOUD even if you're not sure something is funny. And so on. Finally we are let into the theatre and there are staffers whose job it is to direct the pretty people (I guess) to the floor and the un-TV friendly people up to the balcony. Once in the theatre proper, staffers direct you to the front or the back, to the aisle or inside. I'm not sure what it says about me that I was so close. But I was glad for the view of the band.
There's a warm up guy that tells jokes, they show funny clips of Dave skits, the band plays. Then Dave comes out a few minutes before the show and talks to the audience. Then the show starts. Most of the show is obscured. You can't see anything because of all the cameras on stage. Probably the people in the balcony can actually see what's going on stage better. Meanwhile we are watching it on monitors.
During the commercial breaks Dave and the writers are constantly scratching out notes and rewriting the next bit. That was weird to me. You'd think they'd have it mostly set by the time the show starts.
The hour went by fast. There was only one screw up that they did over. That was when Dave was introducing America and he stumbled and then called the cue card guy over to confer. Then the band started back up and they came in from "commercial break" again. I've never been an America fan but they were great. And when they went out to commercial break, the Late Show band started playing the "Through the desert on a horse with no name" song, which I think is the only one of its songs that I know. So America joins in and the lead singer starts singing the lyrics, totally impromptu, and they finished the song coming back in from commercial break. That was a nice moment.
And then it's over and everyone is dumped back out in the cold before you even know it.
I walked back to Grand Central afterward. I needed the air to slap me back to reality. But the walk was also over too soon. I suppose I could have kept walking, but instead I caught the 6:51 home.
I guess I'll watch it again tonight. See if it seems different on my TV at home, though since I watched most of it on the monitor the first time around, I suppose it won't.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
S'no Snow
Today breaks the record - since we started keeping records - of longest this part of NY has gone without snow. The previous record, set in the winter of 1954/55, was Jan. 13. What we have today is just rain. There was some talk it might be sleet but I think that was just wishful thinking on someone's part. I'm not complaining, though. Being eased into winter is fine by me. It won't bother me if we don't get snow all year. That way I don't have to worry about going out in it at 5 a.m. to move my scooter when the snow ploys come to clear the parking lot. That's a broken hip waiting to happen.
Anyway, there's an idiot who posts to our Web site that believes we've had snowless winters lots of times and this whole idea of Global Warming (note: the article in question says nothing about global warming, just about breaking the record and how despite the lack of snow, some snow-related businesses are still making money) is a vast liberal conspiracy. Though, quite honestly, I'm not sure what there is to gain in such a conspiracy. I would think one that generated some quick cash would be better to perpetrate if you going to go about thinking up conspiracies to throw down on the world's people. But maybe I'm just thinking that way because I could my cash-generating conspiracy right now.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Live from New York...
Earlier this week, it hit me - and I'm not sure why I didn't realized this before - I live in New York, home of live television broadcasts. I am a child of television. I love it. I have had cable my whole life, back when cable was 14 stations and channel 14 was ACTS, channel 8 was TBS and channel 9 was WGN. There was no MTV and no CNN and then I remember one day, suddenly there was channel 16 - an all sports channel (who needed that much sports?!).
Anyway, I digress. New York is the home of live television. It's home to the national nightly newscasts. It's home to Saturday Night Live. It is home to soap operas, and talk shows. I even drove by the Ed Sullivan Theatre last week and said, "I wish I could see Letterman live." Then Monday I realized, "Oh. Wait. I CAN see Letterman." I'm off every Monday. So I go online to the Web site and I sign up for tickets. This involves you putting in your name, a phone number, three choices of dates of shows and your guest's name.
I signed up for Jan. 15, the next Monday, and then the next two Mondays after. They take all the names, put them in a big hat (or something) and start drawing for tickets. If they draw your name, you get a call, which quite surprisingly I did today. A guy asked if I could still make the Monday taping. I said yes. He said, "Good call Jamie at this number today. She's an audience coordinator. She'll ask you a trivia question about the show, if you get it right, you get the tickets."
I was a little surprised I got a call at because I always had the impression tickets were hard to come by. (Those long lines outside the theatre they sometimes show during tapings don't really help dispel that impression, although now I think it's just the second taping's audience waiting for the early taping to end and theirs to begin.) But I was convince that though I had watched Letterman since, I don't know, I was 11 (I was supposed to be asleep, but I'd stuff towels under the door and turn the volume down super low and put my head up against the TV so I could hear it), I would not be able to answer any trivia questions. I'm very bad at trivia as anyone who has played Trivial Pursuit with me can attest.
But a quick search of the Internet turned up a few hints about what kind of questions they asked ("Who was Letterman's first guest on CBS?" - Bill Murray, in case you're wondering, who was also his first quest when Late Nite w/DL premiered on NBC "What is the name of the cue card holder?" "What is the bass player's name in the band?" ) So I hit the official site, brushed up on my cast and band members and executive producers and called Jamie. I had to leave a message.
About 45 minutes later I got a call back. She was very nice, actually, and she laughed a lot. I thought someone like that might be cranky because of all the people you must talk to in a day, but she was very pleasant and seemed almost like she wanted to stay on the phone all day and chat. Anyway, she asked if I and my guest were both over 18. If we'd be able to attend the early taping. Then she asked if I watched the show very often. I told her I used to watch it all the time, but now I work nights and don't get to as often as I did before.
Anyway, so my trivia question was, "He's at the beginning of every show. Who is Alan Kalter?" He's the announcer, by the way. After I answered, I added, "Well that wasn't so hard." Jamie found this funny and laughed and then said, "No. We don't try to trick you or anything."
So on Monday, we pick up our ticket's between 2-3 p.m. and the taping lasts from 4:30-5:30 p.m. The weird thing is the tickets are actually issued in your name and the name of your guest - as they appear on your picture ID. Each person has to pick up their own ticket and the tickets are non-transferable. It's like checking in for a flight or something.
Last Monday I also put in for Daily Show tickets. I'm interested to see how that ticket process goes. I think I'll try signing up for every show that tapes in New York. I'll try to work my way around to all of them eventually. That could be funny. Saturday Night Live will be tricky, though, as I am usually at work when it comes on. Oh well, there's always calling in sick. (Sure to be followed closely by the embarrassment of being seen on national television the night you were supposed to be suffering from the stomach flu.)
Anyway, I digress. New York is the home of live television. It's home to the national nightly newscasts. It's home to Saturday Night Live. It is home to soap operas, and talk shows. I even drove by the Ed Sullivan Theatre last week and said, "I wish I could see Letterman live." Then Monday I realized, "Oh. Wait. I CAN see Letterman." I'm off every Monday. So I go online to the Web site and I sign up for tickets. This involves you putting in your name, a phone number, three choices of dates of shows and your guest's name.
I signed up for Jan. 15, the next Monday, and then the next two Mondays after. They take all the names, put them in a big hat (or something) and start drawing for tickets. If they draw your name, you get a call, which quite surprisingly I did today. A guy asked if I could still make the Monday taping. I said yes. He said, "Good call Jamie at this number today. She's an audience coordinator. She'll ask you a trivia question about the show, if you get it right, you get the tickets."
I was a little surprised I got a call at because I always had the impression tickets were hard to come by. (Those long lines outside the theatre they sometimes show during tapings don't really help dispel that impression, although now I think it's just the second taping's audience waiting for the early taping to end and theirs to begin.) But I was convince that though I had watched Letterman since, I don't know, I was 11 (I was supposed to be asleep, but I'd stuff towels under the door and turn the volume down super low and put my head up against the TV so I could hear it), I would not be able to answer any trivia questions. I'm very bad at trivia as anyone who has played Trivial Pursuit with me can attest.
But a quick search of the Internet turned up a few hints about what kind of questions they asked ("Who was Letterman's first guest on CBS?" - Bill Murray, in case you're wondering, who was also his first quest when Late Nite w/DL premiered on NBC "What is the name of the cue card holder?" "What is the bass player's name in the band?" ) So I hit the official site, brushed up on my cast and band members and executive producers and called Jamie. I had to leave a message.
About 45 minutes later I got a call back. She was very nice, actually, and she laughed a lot. I thought someone like that might be cranky because of all the people you must talk to in a day, but she was very pleasant and seemed almost like she wanted to stay on the phone all day and chat. Anyway, she asked if I and my guest were both over 18. If we'd be able to attend the early taping. Then she asked if I watched the show very often. I told her I used to watch it all the time, but now I work nights and don't get to as often as I did before.
Anyway, so my trivia question was, "He's at the beginning of every show. Who is Alan Kalter?" He's the announcer, by the way. After I answered, I added, "Well that wasn't so hard." Jamie found this funny and laughed and then said, "No. We don't try to trick you or anything."
So on Monday, we pick up our ticket's between 2-3 p.m. and the taping lasts from 4:30-5:30 p.m. The weird thing is the tickets are actually issued in your name and the name of your guest - as they appear on your picture ID. Each person has to pick up their own ticket and the tickets are non-transferable. It's like checking in for a flight or something.
Last Monday I also put in for Daily Show tickets. I'm interested to see how that ticket process goes. I think I'll try signing up for every show that tapes in New York. I'll try to work my way around to all of them eventually. That could be funny. Saturday Night Live will be tricky, though, as I am usually at work when it comes on. Oh well, there's always calling in sick. (Sure to be followed closely by the embarrassment of being seen on national television the night you were supposed to be suffering from the stomach flu.)
Friday, January 12, 2007
A Quickie from the NY Times
It looks like nothing more than a 22-foot-long, 4-foot-wide hole in the ground. But (Thursday), when a 180-foot-tall crane lowers a gigantic steel cage down into the trench, construction will begin on the first section of a $174 million wall more than 1,200 feet long.
Resting on bedrock more than 70 feet deep, the concrete wall will keep groundwater from inundating four ground zero office towers, a new transit hub and half a million square feet of retail space.
The wall' s unglamorous official name is the East Bathtub, and it will encompass the margins of Liberty, Church and Vesey Streets, connecting to the concrete bulwark surrounding the World Trade Center.
Filling the trench, at Greenwich and Liberty Streets, "is a significant first step in beginning the commercial and retail components of the site," said Anthony R. Coscia, chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
I like the name East Bathtub...I don't know why. I think it tugs a my curiosity and makes me pause in my normally rushed day to think, "Why East Bathtub....where in the world did that come from." I find it a little bit off-putting but at the same time relaxing...like finding a small park in the most unlikely place.
Resting on bedrock more than 70 feet deep, the concrete wall will keep groundwater from inundating four ground zero office towers, a new transit hub and half a million square feet of retail space.
The wall' s unglamorous official name is the East Bathtub, and it will encompass the margins of Liberty, Church and Vesey Streets, connecting to the concrete bulwark surrounding the World Trade Center.
Filling the trench, at Greenwich and Liberty Streets, "is a significant first step in beginning the commercial and retail components of the site," said Anthony R. Coscia, chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
I like the name East Bathtub...I don't know why. I think it tugs a my curiosity and makes me pause in my normally rushed day to think, "Why East Bathtub....where in the world did that come from." I find it a little bit off-putting but at the same time relaxing...like finding a small park in the most unlikely place.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
The Big Smell
So apparently the city smells. My brother and I were down in lower Manhattan today and we were totally oblivious to the smell till someone mentioned it at lunch (along with all the dead birds in Austin....X-Files, anyone?). All I noticed today was that it was way colder than the weather people said it was going to be. I was not nearly warm enough for my comfort. This lead to much drinking of coffee.The first place we hit up was Zagats rated. That's weird, right? Anyway it was called Kudo Beans, according to my receipt. It was on First Avenue, I think (maybe it was Second. I can't remember now) North of Houston. They had excellent coffee. I recommend it should you find yourself over that way.
We had met someone for lunch at Katz's Deli, which apparently -despite being there since 1886 or something crazy like that - was made famous by the orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally. I didn't realize it till we got there. The pastrami was pretty good. I'd didn't care for the corned beef, however. I'm not sure the food really lives up to the expectations. Plus it is PRICEY. One sandwich, with no fries or any side, costs between $12-$16. I think you're paying a lot for the reputation.
Later in the day, after wandering through Chinatown and gaping at the flatten roasted(?) chickens and still flopping fish in the stores, we went out to Astoria (where I found an excellent sale at the GAP on a chunky knit scarf - FINALLY, Elizabeth, FINALLY - I almost went back upstairs when I checked out and realized the scarf even cheaper than expected, $2, to buy the scarf in every color they had plus extras to give as gifts, but I didn't want to embarrass my brother). Anyway, back to Astoria, I had a second unsatisfactory visit to Omonia. It also claims to be Zagats rated, but it must be poorly rate because the desserts and the coffees there sucked again. Last time the desserts all tasted about three and half weeks old. This time something was just off with it, but I can't explain what. So that's it. I think I'm going to have to write that place off and search for Greek desserts/pasthas elsewhere in the city. I'll keep you update as my search continues.
Anyway, in case you missed all the stories and late show jokes about the stinky air, here's the story - once again AP story totally illegally posted below:
Mysterious natural gas-odor leaves NYC
KAREN MATTHEWS
Associated Press
NEW YORK - They bombarded 911 with calls, crowded the sidewalks in front of evacuated buildings and tuned to the news for word of what was happening. The question on the minds of many New Yorkers on Monday morning was: "What's that smell?"
A natural gas-like odor hung over much of Manhattan and parts of New Jersey, confounding authorities. The smell seemed to be gone by early afternoon.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said there was no indication the air was unsafe. "It may just be an unpleasant smell," he said. He said sensors did not show an unusually high concentration of natural gas, and the city's major utility company reported it found no gas leaks.
The mayor said the smell may have been caused by a leak of a substance called mercaptan that is added to natural gas for safety reasons to give it a recognizable odor. By itself, natural gas is odorless.
Some commuter trains running between New Jersey and Manhattan were suspended for about an hour as a precaution. A few city schools were briefly evacuated. Some apartment dwellers were advised to close their windows.
Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said there was nothing to suggest terrorism.
"That smell was stinking. It smelled like, toxic," said Alfred Stewart, 47, who lives in an apartment in Manhattan's Chelsea section. He said it smelled like a mix of oil and kerosene: "You stayed in it and held it enough, you probably would have got dizzy from it."
Twelve people were taken to hospitals with minor complaints such as irritation and difficulty breathing, fire officials said.
The Fire Department began getting calls around 9 a.m. Gas provider Con Edison said it fielded 700 calls from people worried about the smell, from as far north as Washington Heights to as far south as Greenwich Village and as far east as Lexington Avenue.
Con Edison spokesman Chris Olert said more than 60 utility workers fanned out across Manhattan's West Side but found no indication of a gas leak.
Norman Thomas High School on East 33rd Street was evacuated for about a half-hour.
Susan Badger, a retiree who lives in Chelsea, said she left her apartment building to escape the smell. "If it's throughout the whole city, it seems that it must be a lot of gas. It's really extreme," she said.
Complaints about the odor also came from New Jersey, across the Hudson River from Manhattan. But no air sampling was done there because officials had no specific location to investigate, said Elaine Makatura, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Protection.
New York City is no stranger to odd smells.
In 2005, a maple syrup aroma spread across Manhattan twice within a matter of weeks. Environmental officials sent teams into neighborhoods where the calls originated but found nothing dangerous and could not explain the smell.
Last August, seven people were treated for headaches and nausea after a gaseous odor was reported in Queens and Staten Island. Its source remains a mystery.
---
Associated Press writers Jeffrey Gold in Newark, N.J., and Samantha Gross, Deepti Hajela, Ula Ilnytzky and Amy Westfeldt in New York City contributed to this report.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Construction begins...
...Even as they continue to discover more body parts in the area. They found two bones today on a service road at Ground Zero. It's creepy to be down there while construction is going on and look around and think, "There could be body parts under my feet right now." AP story totally illegally posted below:
(AP) NEW YORK Workers digging up a road at the World Trade Center site in a search for remains of Sept. 11 victims found two more bones on Tuesday.
The remains, about 1 to 2 inches long, were found during excavation of the street-level service road on the west end of the lower Manhattan site, said Ellen Borakove, spokeswoman for the city medical examiner's office.
The bones, along with four recovered last week, were the first to be found in the dirt and debris that make up the road, which carries dozens of construction trucks a day into ground zero. More than 200 other remains have been found in several manholes beneath the road since October.
City officials overseeing the search announced on Friday they would dig up three-quarters of the road, which runs about four blocks, to locate additional human remains from victims of the 2001 terrorist attack.
They also said they would partially search other sections of the road located closer to the site of a planned 1,776-foot skyscraper to replace the twin towers. Heavy construction of the Freedom Tower has been under way for months.
The medical examiner's office said it hopes to match DNA profiles to some of the bones that are being recovered, perhaps to identify some 40 percent of the 2,749 people killed in the Sept. 11 attack, whose families have never received remains.
Borakove said Tuesday that none of the remains located at ground zero since October -- and none of the more than 700 remains found in the past year at a nearby skyscraper -- has been positively identified.
Officials overseeing ground zero have said they will keep one lane of traffic open on the road during the excavation to prevent construction delays. A transit hub and a Sept. 11 memorial also are under construction.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Celebrity Sighting Numero Uno
So I had my first celebrity sighting since moving to NYC. It's pretty pathetic. I mean, I know this city is lousy with famous people, but apparently I don't run in the same circles with them. No, my first celebrity sighting is the man who coulda been president had about a zillion more people taken him seriously and someone other than Jamie voted for him (seriously, I have no idea if Jamie voted for him, he just seemed like the friend most likely to). I crossed 5th Avenue today at 54 Street around 5:30 p.m. and was momentarily confused by seeing the shorter-than-expected Rev. Al Sharpton right in front of me. A young black man ran up to him with a disposable camera and got his picture taken. And then off Al went.
I turned to my brother and said, "That was Al Sharpton!"
To which my 25-year-old brother replied, "Who?"
So I turned to my cousin, who is about 7 years older than me and said, "That was the Rev. Al Sharpton."
I got the same response.
Quite frankly, I was a little flabbergasted. Then again, the same cousin on Saturday when we were out at the Statue of Liberty asked me why the flags were half staff.
I said, "Because a president died."
And she said, "Which president?"
I don't know why we in the newspaper business even bother. We should just write about puppies and babies and weird crime because nobody cares about anything else.
I turned to my brother and said, "That was Al Sharpton!"
To which my 25-year-old brother replied, "Who?"
So I turned to my cousin, who is about 7 years older than me and said, "That was the Rev. Al Sharpton."
I got the same response.
Quite frankly, I was a little flabbergasted. Then again, the same cousin on Saturday when we were out at the Statue of Liberty asked me why the flags were half staff.
I said, "Because a president died."
And she said, "Which president?"
I don't know why we in the newspaper business even bother. We should just write about puppies and babies and weird crime because nobody cares about anything else.
Monday, January 01, 2007
(Emerald) Nuts to you Times Square
While we (my cousin, my brother and I) went to stare wide-eyed at all the 1 million crazies in Time Square last night/early this morning, we wound up in Central Park to ring in the new year. There is a midnight marathon that kicks off with a fire works show (see sad pathetic picture I took via camera phone). And there was music, free nuts (the race was sponsored by Emerald Nuts) and best of all all the port-o-potty's you could ever want. Take THAT Times Square. It was a good time, actually. Very laid back...although I neglected to bring any champagne for midnight. I'll be better prepared next year.
Happy 07, all!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)